Pocket Universe

It looks like more songs from Guitar Hero II have been announced, bringing the list of licensed songs up to 25 (from an expected total of 40). I’m not familiar with some of them (never really a big fan of Black Sabbath or Anthrax), but I was pleasantly surprised to see some favorites on the list. “Message in a Bottle” by The Police would be particularly good, since it has a good guitar part and a great bass line. (Remember that in co-op mode, one player will be on lead guitar, while the other will play bass or rhythm guitar.) I am also pleasantly surprised to see “Misirlou” by surf-guitar god Dick Dale, which is probably best known as the theme from Pulp Fiction. “Crazy on You” by Heart is a great choice, although I would have preferred “Barracuda.”

There were two song selections in particular that stood out, ranging from fantastic to ingenious. “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd is a rock staple, with a nine-minute running time, and a gloriously long and involved solo at the end. But while “Free Bird” is an obvious choice, it must have taken a true genius to secure the rights to “Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” by England’s loudest band, Spinal Tap.* With Nigel Tufnel at the lead, it goes without saying that the lead guitar line is stellar, beginning with the extended string of hammer-ons. The additional guitar part (I presume it will be rhythm guitar) is suitably driving, and I’m sure those of us with kids will enjoy having them sing along with lyrics such as, “You’re too young, and I’m too well-hung.” It is nice to see that the makers of Guitar Hero can pay tribute to such a great rock band as Spinal Tap. One can only hope that “Big Bottom” is somewhere on the sequel, with its rousing triple bass line.

Including the ones that have been previously announced, here is the set list so far, complete with links to iTunes:

“Arterial Black” — Drist (Original Track)
“Beast and the Harlot” — Avenged Sevenfold
“Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?” — The Rolling Stones
“Crazy on You” — Heart
“Free Bird” — Lynyrd Skynyrd
“Heart Shaped Box” — Nirvana
“Jessica” — The Allman Brothers Band
“John The Fisherman” — Primus (Original Track)
“Laid To Rest” — Lamb of God
“Madhouse” — Anthrax
“Message in a Bottle” — The Police
“Misirlou” — Dick Dale
“Psychobilly Freakout” — The Reverend Horton Heat
“Shout at the Devil” — Mötley Crüe
“Strutter” — KISS
“Surrender” — Cheap Trick
“Sweet Child O’ Mine” — Guns N’ Roses
“Tattooed Love Boys” — The Pretenders
“Them Bones” — Alice in Chains
“Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight” — Spinal Tap
“Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart” — Stone Temple Pilots
“War Pigs” — Black Sabbath
“Who Was in My Room Last Night?” — The Butthole Surfers
“You Really Got Me” — The Kinks, as performed by Van Halen
“YYZ” — Rush

* I apologize for the incorrect spelling of the band’s name, but the OS won’t let me type the dieresis over the “n.” That’s probably because no one ever uses that punctuation (“¨”) over a consonant. I guess Spinal Tap is also too revolutionary for the typesetting industry.

As you hopefully know by now, the new Star Wars DVDs are out this week, and for the first time ever, they include the original theatrical release versions of each movie. Unfortunately (and for reasons which might be complete lies), the theatrical versions are taken from laserdisc transfers instead of new film transfers, so they are non-anamorphic and not in Dolby Digital. But hey, it’s better than nothing, and likely the best we’ll ever get.

But this post isn’t about that. Have you ever wondered what is different between the original versions and the 1997 and 2004 editions? Well wonder no more, thanks to Star Wars (not A New Hope; see the changes for more information), The Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. It is also notable that they even list the more controversial changes that Lucas has not previously admitted to, such as trimming shots of Imperial soldiers being hit by laser blasts, made to tone down the violence somewhat. Even I was surprised by the number of changes to each of the movies, and I could probably rattle off fifty changes to each movie just off the top of my head. Take a few minutes and check them out.

Ah, it’s been a long time since I’ve used the old “Metablog” category, hasn’t it? After a long and arduous process, I have finally updated Movable Type from 2.64 to the ultra-modern 3.32. Unfortunately, the process has not been without its share of problems.

The primary impetus for this upgrade was the amount of spam clogging this site. I had a blacklist plugin that would filter out spam, but I had to constantly babysit it, adding new spam entries and deleting old comments on a daily basis. If I ever fell behind, it became an arduous process to weed out the spam while simultaneously keeping the gems of opinion from my few trusted friends.

Luckily, my web hosting service came to my rescue by moving my site to a new server without telling me. This resulted in a broken site. After I figured out the problem and fixed it, my site worked again, but the blacklist database became corrupted. I had no way to mass-delete comments. I could delete them one by one, but at ten seconds apiece (and that’s being generous), I was looking at over three 24-hour days of deleting, since I had something like 25,000 comments to go through.

In more recent versions of Movable Type, the comment system has become more robust, with authentication being the primary method of keeping out the digital riff-raff. So from now on, you will need to register a Typekey account before you can comment. I hope it doesn’t cause you too much inconvenience.

Sadly, in the process of upgrading to 3.3, I somehow lost all my old comments. I am still trying to find out how to get them back. I guess it’s good because now I don’t have to plow through the old comments to delete them all, but bad because I lose all of your wit and wisdom. For that, I am sorry. Hopefully I can figure out a way to salvage them. But until them, please enjoy the new, spam-free site! I will try to keep posting in a timely manner, so keep reading!

What’s the best part of any “Weird Al” Yankovic album? It’s the polka medley! He was the first artist to satisfy that untapped need, that little place inside of us that says, “This is a great song, but it would be even better as a polka!” If you have an extra ten dollars lying around, you can pick up Weird Al’s (or would that be “Weird Al”’s?) latest album Straight Outta Lynwood, released today. Or if you are simply an aficionado of the sublime grace of the polka, you can spend those shekels on an iMix of all ten of Al’s polka medleys, culled from his twelve studio albums. Either way, it’s money well spent.